[mitcheme]

What I dislike about these kinds of "evolutionary" arguments is that they tend to assume that the differences between the genders are genetic, even when there's no evidence for that. Even as late as the Victorian ages, several of the traits we now think of as immutable part of being male or female were swapped around. For the Victorians, blue was for girls and pink was for boys, and all women had the potential to become insatiable, incurable beasts for sex, one reason it was so important to keep chaste. This model of sexuality fit what the people experienced in their daily lives, just as ours does to us, and they had their studies that revealed women who enjoyed sex far more than was proper. Compare the here-and-now with every other culture in the history of the planet, and most of our "innate" traits turn out not to be. It makes it very difficult to take the "innate" people seriously.

I don't think it's that surprising that so many women are opposed to the idea that we're essentially designed to live out our whole lives hidden in the private sphere. Especially when you consider the 1950s, when (white, middle-to-upper class) women were "free" to do just that. They were miserable. I know I would have been miserable too. There's a reason the Feminine Mystique exists, and the 50s housewife who drowns herself in a bottle of booze is a cliche. For most people, that's just not enough to make a fulfilling life by itself. Even women today who are SAHMs have other things going on than taking care of their household, husband, and kids. He implies that it's somehow detrimental to our survival if women like me are free to create lives that don't make us deeply unhappy. If this arrangement had been as cooperative and nice as the author claims, how does feminism fit in? If we were happy inside the home, why did women look up and think, "I want to be a CEO" in the first place? Why did they not all look up and say, "I'm glad I don't have to do that, it looks stressful"? Given that it was their job to take care of the CEOs and other assorted businessmen after they came home stressed from work, it's not as though they didn't realize the drawbacks. Vacuuming is just not meaningful work.

Guys, if you lived in a time where your choices were to latch onto a woman for financial support or pick a low-paying unskilled job, because everyone believed you were genetically incapable of doing anything better, would that be OK with you? Or would you find it personally offensive? What if they said you were incapable of making art, and labelled any creative work made by men as not art in order to reinforce that? (In the case of women, that's tapestries, embroideries, and pottery, for a start.) What if our default model of "real" sex was stuff women liked more than men (random, probably inaccurate example: doll up for us, dance for us, an hour of groping, grinding, and oral, PIV at the end optional), and "all men were frigid" because for some reason they found it less interesting than women? Come on. Women are people, like you; empathy applies. The old ways were awful.

[nocipher]

You fail to provide a compelling defense of your argument. One of the major points of the article was in direct opposition to your first sentence. It was supported by arguing that biology forces women to be more important for reproduction and then showing how this can lead to the circumstances we have today.

Your disagreement is predicated on certain traits not being linked to femininity or masculinity and economic forces. You wave your hand over the entire article and then rail against women's role in the past. The argument is a classic strawman. You failed to invalidate any of the article's points and instead talk about narrow definitions of women's social behaviors as if the entire article had said women are only good in one-on-one relationships. The article merely posits that women have more stake in maintaining a few intimate relationships than a large number of shallow relationships. This point is arguable but, rather than argue against it, you claim that the article insinuates women should /only/ focus on intimate relationships for the survival of our species, and then say this is clearly ridiculous. I agree with your logic here, but it is rather irrelevant to the topic at hand. The discourse is about why women are better/worse/different than men, not whether women should be allowed to live in the "public sphere".

The closing of your argument goes even further afield and tries to elicit empathy from men by attempting to justify women's historically subservient economic position and then forming a weak thought experiment based on outdated female stereotypes. Your penultimate statement is that "women are people" which is followed by the "The old ways were awful." None of this contributes to the discussion nor does it it reveal any interesting insight.

[mitcheme]

There's very little actual substance there to invalidate, and I did discuss some of issues. His analysis of women's creativity is wrong, and is his talk about relative sex drives is spurious. I also think it's a huge mistake to label cultures who have persisted by making over half their population miserable (women and low-status men) as "successful". If you wanted me to take it apart line-by-line you will have to be disappointed.

[mitcheme]

nocipher, his analysis of women's creativity is wrong because we know women have created art throughout history. We don't actually know how much art, unfortunately, because historically, the bulk of women's creative expression was not considered "real art". It wasn't signed by its creator, and its recipients didn't treat it with that extra level of care to prevent it from being destroyed. That's a big issue when you're talking largely about decorative textiles and pottery. Then there are the women who posed as men to have their art be treated more seriously. Again, we don't actually know how many women have done this, we only know from some discovered examples that it's been done for quite a long time. So to say with confidence that women don't create art is wrong. We know there have been some, and many art historians suspect there have been much more than we give credit for because of the above factors. Like many 'innate' folks, he's made no effort to account for cultural factors before declaring things innate. My personal thought on this is that if women, like men, didn't have that creative drive, they would not have bothered to create in an environment where they were untrained in art, sometimes discouraged from doing it, and given no credit at all for their work. The only motivation I can see there is the pure joy of creating. Sure, you might need a pot, but there's no need to paint it with a scene from your local mythology. And I don't think anyone can come up with a materialistic reason that you might need a novel or a bit of poetry.

His discussion on relative sex drives (sorry, typo) is spurious because, again, he doesn't separate this from cultural factors like what actions we define as being "normal" sex, and how the sexes relate to each other. The Mosuo, for example, does things differently. Instead of monogamy or polygyny, they have two-way polyamory. Young women are given a private place to bring lovers back to. She can bring home as many lovers as she likes, and the men can go to as many women's homes as they are invited to. If she wants, she invites him back, and if he wants, he goes. I remember reading that at one time, it wasn't unusual for a woman to have fifty partners in her lifetime. Women are under no economic or social pressure to invite lots of men over, so to me, it's really odd that this would be common if women didn't enjoy sex. Mosuo women these days have fewer partners, because they have access to a lot of western media and culture. Some girls are now afraid that if they invite over too many boys, they will be considered "slutty", and this is an image problem that the Mosuo as a whole are having. To me, that looks like proof that women are being discouraged from having as much sex as they'd like to have, thanks to social pressures that are inherent in our own culture. Or at least better proof than saying, "it happens, so it's genetic".

[scott_s]

Interestingly, the Mosuo have a different model of the family than most of the rest of humans. In Mosuo culture, men take care of their nieces and nephews, not their sons and daughters. (I had to look this up on Wikipedia to verify it, but I guess it was true based on your description of their sexual relationships - such an arrangement is not stable otherwise.)

So, two points. One, this kind of culture is the exception for humans. I think there are a handful of other cultures that operate this way, but it's still the exception. When an overwhelmingly large percentage of a species behaves in a particular way, we tend to attribute that to instinct rather than random chance - even though there are exceptional cases. I think it's also valid to ask why this kind of culture is not the dominant culture. It's possible that these cultures get out-competed by cultures where men are usually responsible for their own children.

Second, the author did not claim that women don't like sex or have no sex drive. Not enjoying sex was not a part of his argument. His argument was that, in aggregate, men have a stronger sex drive. That claim is consistent with Masuo women having up to 50 partners in their life.

[mitcheme]

I think you're mistaken about the model of family that "most of the rest of humans" have. There is way more variation than arguments like this tend to give credit to. Traditional Hawaii, everyone your age is a sibling and everyone your parents' age is a parent. Other parts of traditional China, the family group you belong to depends on your father entirely. Your biological mother is not related to you, since her father was part of a different family. Parts of Native America, your mother's sisters are also your mothers, and your father's brothers are your fathers, but your father's sisters and mother's brothers are aunts and uncles. These are just basic systems of reckoning, it gets quite a bit more complicated once you look at the actual living arrangements that go with them (where do couples go to live, where do the children live, how do marriages or whatever other sexual arrangements work). By population, nowadays there are fewer that vary from the western norm, but if you count up what was going on pre-globalization, we are not in the majority. These different family systems are fading away because of modern-day western influence only, and I think that might have a lot more to do with the military (and more recently, economic power) than the custody arrangements. You can't simply point to everything western and say, "this is why we won".

I don't believe it is consistent. Based on the Masuo you can see that women will have less sex if they start being treated like western women. You can't look at how women behave in western culture and use them as proof that women have a lower sex drive, because we know that evidence has been tainted.

[sliverstorm]

So, taking your pristine example of the Masuo, we can just compare how many partners women had to how many men had...

OH WAIT!

You only said 'women had 50 on average. That's a lot. Clearly they have sex drive.'

No one is debating whether they have sex drive. The article stated they had lower RELATIVE drive. You cannot refute this point with only statistics about women. Your facts are meaningless without the counterpoint male statistics from the Masuo.

I apologize for my slight snarkyness, but you are blatantly ignoring key truths about the article in an attempt to argue your point. Especially as that has already been pointed out to you and you continued to ignore it, I am somewhat irked.

[scott_s]

Interesting points. And I agree that the reduction in other systems of family are a result of military and economic power. But the article is proposing a theory for how the Western military and economic powers were able to outcompete the others - for how such an imbalance in military and economic power was able to develop. I agree that you can't point to everything and say "this is why," but I don't believe he has done that. He provided extensive arguments.

Masuo women may have sex with less partners, but has it been confirmed that they have less sex?

[cefarix]

One of the problems in Western cultures is that being a CEO, a President, a rockstar, an astronaut, etc is more highly valued than say, being a mother. This is why many Western women feel that being a mother with young kids and staying at home is not fulfilling their lives - because the cultural messages tell them that being a stay-at-home mom is an unglamarous job.

You will find that not all cultures are like this - in many Asian cultures for example, being a mother is a very honorable and glamorous thing to do.

Women usually make up more than half of a society's population, something you agree with yourself. In that case, don't think it highly unlikely that societies in which women are miserable might not survive long? And yet the cultures in which you assume women are miserable have survived, endured, and even thrived, for millennia (I'm not talking about the 50s in America here).

Imagine the consequences if women were truly miserable in these societies: What would happen to the next generation? What would be the consequences of having a mother, grandmother, and aunts, who are utterly miserable? How would the next generation be raised in a setting like this? Every society has men and women, every family has men and women. It would tear families apart, husbands from wives, brothers from sisters. And it would tear societies apart. Any society who went down the path of making women miserable, or men miserable, has not survived because it cannot reproduce and pass on its culture successfully.

[mitcheme]

Why aren't we talking about the 1950's? If you're correct, that the problem is a lack of glamour, then the 50's should not have been a problem. Motherhood was the ultimate glamorous profession for a woman in those days. Sure, you can go to college, but there's no sense doing anything with it when you could get married. The ideal was a beautiful, spotless house in the suburbs, beautiful and well-behaved children, a great and successful husband. Dress up every day, makeup, hair, a pretty dress, pearls even. Fingers in every community organization: church, PTA, charities. You get to host parties, lots of parties. The way we talk about 50's homemaking today is a lot different from the way we talked about it then.

Which cultures in which women are homemakers only, have stayed without change to gender roles for millenia? When I think of cultures that have stayed mostly unchanged, I think of the ones where women are contributing significantly to survival. Hunter-gatherer societies where men hunt and women gather. In most HG societies plant foods make up a large portion of the food; women's work is essential. And a step beyond that, societies where men hunt and women tend gardens or farms. Or where men and women farm and ranch together. Yes, women also tend to take care of the children in these societies. But modern-day me still has to do dishes and laundry; that doesn't preclude me from doing other things.

[cefarix]

I was not talking about the 50s in America for two reasons: firstly because I was talking about cultures in general, and second because I was talking about long-term multi-generational survival and time periods. The 50s, a decade, is not long enough for a society to go extinct because its culture subjugated its women. I don't know everything about the 50s and probably less than you do. I was born in the late 80s and my family is from Pakistan, although I grew up mostly in Texas. However, from what I know about the 50s in America and the decades leading up to today, I can say that women were getting mixed signals. The culturally right thing to do was to be a stay-at-home mom, have a nice house in the suburbs, with well-behaved children, to cook and have everything spotless clean. And yet it was at the same time not a glamorous thing to do. Let me explain: even when people said it is glamorous to be a mom at home, people also said, it is really cool to be CEO, president, or an astronaut. And when they talked about CEOs, presidents, and astronauts, they were much more excited and much more sincere in their admiration and respect for them than when they would talk about stay-at-home moms.

[ezy]

This is profoundly naive.

Consider, for a moment, that a woman may not want to be a mother, or more realistically, that's not all she wants to be.

Many Asian cultures are notoriously sexist. And, no, I wouldn't say being a mother is glamorous in those cultures... being a mother is expected and a woman is honored, briefly, when she fulfills those expectations, but it's not glamorous. Society's expectation, even Western society, is precisely that motherhood is something to be valued by women. There's nothing to fix there. However, the broken part, and the part feminism addresses, is that is should not be the only thing valued in women.

You're naive. In the real world, plenty of misery lasts. Saying a culture cannot survive with misery is something you invented. It's not like we're removing limbs here -- a woman can live with decreased expectations and limitations without killing the culture that oppresses her. Often the coping techniques include (surprise!) investing all her energy into making her children accomplish by proxy (speaking of asian cultures, sound familiar?) what she could not.

[cefarix]

> Consider, for a moment, that a woman may not want to be a mother

Then she is not likely to get the same respect as a woman who does want to be a mother. Respect for women who want to be mothers, and not respecting women who do not want to be mothers, is something that naturally evolves in a culture that values its population. This is because women who have genes and/or memes that cause them to have more children will spread those genes and/or memes more widely than women who have fewer children because they had a genes and/or memes that caused them to not want to be a mother or not have so many children. This would be reflected in the culture in that women who want to be mothers would be respected more than women who did not want to be mothers. The same thing can be said for men being fathers.

> or more realistically, that's not all she wants to be

I never said anything about women being _only_ mothers. The best mothers to raise the next generation are those who, first of all of course have children, but then after that, have an education, are able to dream and aspire of other things, and pursue those opportunities.

> Many Asian cultures are notoriously sexist.

You say this as if being sexist is a bad thing. Men and women are different, and this is reflected in the fact that every culture has different social roles for men and women. There is nothing wrong with being sexist, it simply arises from the fact that men and women are biologically different. The problem happens when women are judged by what men are supposed to do, or when men are judged by what women are supposed to do.

> Saying a culture cannot survive with misery is something you invented.

No, it simply stands to reason. You cannot subjugate the females in society, generation after generation, and expect it to survive. The psychological effects would be passed down to the next generation, and the fabric of society which raises the next generation, would unravel. Just look at the effects on children who grow up in abusive households. Now extrapolate this to an entire society. The results would be catastrophic.

> Often the coping techniques include (surprise!) investing all her energy into making her children accomplish by proxy (speaking of asian cultures, sound familiar?) what she could not.

All parents, mothers and fathers, want their children to accomplish what they could not. This is not limited to mothers. Fathers will also use it as a "coping technique". Say a father wanted to go to the city and get an education so he could have a bigger house and more luxuries for his family, but was unable to do so in his life. Would he not encourage his children to pursue that? Of course. This has nothing to do with the issue at hand, namely the subjugation of women.

[ezy]

> You say this as if being sexist is a bad thing

If you know how to read English, yes, it's a bad thing. In the modern definition, the connotation of the word implies over-generalization. i.e. it's not rational behavior. No one interprets it otherwise unless you're trying to score points.

> The problem happens when women are judged by what men are supposed to do, or when men are judged by what women are supposed to do.

Somehow we know women are "supposed to" demote the rest of their aspirations and nurture a child all the way to adulthood because they breastfeed a child until it's 2, but a father can pursue his dreams because he need not be around after depositing a sperm donation.

> No, it simply stands to reason. You cannot subjugate the females in society, generation after generation, and expect it to survive.

Around we go... You'll have to define "reason" for me, because I usually think of it as taking into account existing evidence, including reading about women's experiences in such societies, before drawing such conclusions, but, to each his own. There is such a thing as a sustainable society that never reaches it's full potential...

> All parents, mothers and fathers, want their children to accomplish what they could not.

I worded this badly. Most parents want their children to be successful. This does not imply that the children should exist as proxies for them -- as complete representations of their self-worth. Again, I suppose it's sustainable culturally, although I'm not sure how it's supposed to be non-miserable. :-)

[scott_s]

If you object to the word "successful," then just replace it with something else. His meaning is the same as in evolutionary biology: it out-competes its peers and continues to exist. He does not mean to imply that its good or that the people who comprise the culture are happy.

By analogy, I would claim that sharks are successful. By the standard above, they clearly are: they've continued to exist and out-competed peer species for millions of years. But I'm making an objective claim only, not a value judgement on whether or not this is good.

[run4yourlives]

> over half their population miserable

Do you have any data to support the assertion that everyone that isn't occupying a high-status leadership role within a society is "miserable"?

You're personalizing the argument and then missing the point.

[sliverstorm]

You don't need to prove a statement like that. It's common knowledge the only people who are not miserable in the world have a net worth over $1B. Money, after all, is the one and only ingredient to happiness.

[nocipher]

The generalizations aren't interesting though because they provide no fodder, no argument. Even without picking apart an argument line-by-line, your conclusions should be supported. Your response actually raises interesting points, but then leaves them without any supporting logic. Why is his analysis of women's creativity wrong? Where is the fault in his logic? What is a better analysis? Why is his discussion on relative sex spurious? I'm left with a lot of unanswered questions. I do not expect everyone to be able to give a very detailed analysis of an argument, but if there are key arguments you disagree with, it is not too much work to sketch your logic so that others understand your point.

[run4yourlives]

Did you read the article? The author gives several examples that completely counter your underlying argument.

It isn't about ability, it's about motivation.

[mitcheme]

Again, so if women lack those motivations, where did feminism come from?

[run4yourlives]

You are clearly missing the point. It's not that every woman lacks motivation, it's that the trend for woman is to lack a particular motivation to do a certain thing, which - the author points out - is exactly the same behaviour men exhibit.

It just happens to be that this tendency, coupled with differing social behaviours and expectations, is what has produced the current situation.

[cefarix]

Feminism arose for the same reasons that any social movement arises: a part of society feels that they are being unfairly treated as second-class citizens. What exactly does it mean to be a second-class citizen? Whether it is getting paid less, or not having the same job opportunities, in the end it boils down to this: a second-class citizen feels that they are not given the same honor and dignity as a normal citizen.

So feminism arose because a significant amount of women believed that they did not have the honor and dignity that they deserved. So why did they not have honor and dignity? Had it always been this way in American society? It had not always been this way in American society. But the industrial revolution led to changes in society, and those changes changed the cultural values of American society. Cultural values such as what kind of person is honorable and dignified.

People with outlandish amounts of wealth came to be honorable and dignified. Eccentric/genius/rich/crazy type people became honorable and dignified. It was "cool" to be rich, to own a big oil company, to do ridiculous things with your wealth, to invent cool gadgets (and to a lesser extent, research - Einstein became famous, as did Edison, Tesla, etc).

As American culture shifted its values, people who did not take outlandish risks or were not rich, lost their honor and dignity. The group that was most affected throughout all parts of society were women, who tended not to take risks or behave in outlandish ways, and who tended to be stay-at-home moms and grandmothers.

And when the cultural values changed, not only did women perceive themselves as being "stuck" in less honorable positions because of their gender - but men began to think the same about women. Men also began to think that, "Well, a woman stays in her house all day and cooks and looks after kids and is a wife, well then she must be looked down upon as a second-class citizen because she doesn't get the same honor and dignity and respect."

When all of society - men and women - began to look at women as being in less dignified positions and jobs, not because they were women, but because of what they did (and they did what they did because they were women - they bear children), then women reacted to that and the feminist movement was born.

Unfortunately, the feminist movement has not helped the situation, because society still values the rich, powerful, eccentric, outlandish risk-taking person more than a person who just does his or her job in a quiet but fulfilling manner. As a result, the feminist movement has tended to push women into behaving like men, and women are still not satisfied, and the resulting changes in society have left men feeling unhappy to the point where men feel that they are second-class citizens. Until American societies returns the dignity back to women for being women - not for trying to be like men - this problem will persist.

[ezy]

No. You should really read more before pontificating.

Feminism did not arise because we suddenly stopped valuing women as mothers. It arose because that is all we valued in women[1].

The history, if you bother to read it, bears this out. Hell, even today, certain attitudes bear this out, although with the help of feminism, we see less of it in modern culture.

Do you think a woman should be allowed to become a doctor? A physicist? To run in a marathon? SHould she be less valued if she chooses not to be a mother? Should she be forced to make a choice between those occupations and motherhood? And if she chooses both, which should be more valued by society?

[1] Ok, not all, but I'll leave out the other aspects so-as not to confuse the issue.

[cefarix]

Feminism arose because women did not like the way they were being treated. Society did actually stop valuing motherhood. It was an indirect result of society valuing doctors, physicists, CEOs, etc, yet restricting women from those same things. Only women can be mothers, and when women are restricted from those things society values, they become more defined only by being a parent, and when the value of women falls, so does the value of a woman being a parent.

To answer your question, of course a woman should be allowed to become a doctor, a physicist, or an athlete. Yes, she should be valued less if she chooses not to be a mother, just the same as a man should be valued less if he chooses not to be a father. She should not sacrifice her motherhood in pursuit of a career, just as a man should not sacrifice his fatherhood in pursuit of a career.

Because of the biological difference between a woman and a man, a woman must take much more time and effort away from other things in life to be a mother, whereas a man barely has to do any effort to have children. And so a natural division of labor occurs where the father takes on the role of a provider and the mother takes on the role of a nurturer. Since the father has more of a burden for providing, it is more important for him to become a doctor or such, but this is because that is how he fulfills his duties as a father.

You might say, why should a person be valued less if they choose not to be a parent? Well, all normal people have a sex, male or female. Why are we male or female if not to procreate with the opposite sex? Furthermore, any culture that values people not having children over people having children would have gone extinct.

[ezy]

You're not being very clear here, because it seems you've just said the precise opposite of what you posted previously in the first paragraph.

Initially, you said feminism arose because we started valuing other (more flamboyant?) occupations more than the more mundane, which essentially boiled down to motherhood in your post.

Now you're saying that, no, motherhood wasn't valued any less, but woman were discouraged from entering those more flamboyant occupations. This, in turn devalued motherhood through its association with people not involved in high status occupations, thus feminism arose as a reaction to the lessening of status.

This re-raises the question of why women were discouraged from entering high-status occupations initially. And as far as I can tell, you've completely closed your argument in a circle.

[olalonde]

From men: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_theory

[nocipher]

Feminism was born out of women recognizing a discrepancy between what women attained and what men attained. It's not that suddenly women became motivated to reach higher level of achievement but merely that they noticed that men had more than them and decided such inequality was unacceptable.

[mitcheme]

It would be nice if someone would actually address this instead of just downvoting. I knew my comment wouldn't be popular when I made it, but I was hoping to get some actual answers out of the deal.

[rgraham]

I didn't read it that way. I think he was speaking more to the systems that have evolved around us. He tried to fit a theory to the data of observations in behavioral differences in men and women. I don't think it's relevant to him if those differences are genetic.

It reminds me of the theme for 'The Wire.' Systems of culture and how they affect people in them. People can have power in some systems and none in others. The kaleidoscope of outcomes (just and unjust) that come from those systems stem from people in them that (mostly) make fairly rational, self-motivated decisions. Put differently: the systems aren't fair or unfair, right or wrong. They just are.

[mitcheme]

Maybe you're right, that it makes no difference to him. To me, it matters a great deal. None of these systems are static; they are constantly changing, and we have some control over how they change. You can compare the systems that already exist, and on some set of criteria say that these are better or worse than those. So although there's never going to be 'one system to rule them all', at some point I think we do need to figure out which aspects of our system are variables and which are constants, because if we don't decide what to change, someone else will decide for us.

[charlieflowers]

"Even as late as the Victorian ages, several of the traits we now think of as immutable part of being male or female were swapped around. For the Victorians, blue was for girls and pink was for boys, and all women had the potential to become insatiable, incurable beasts for sex, one reason it was so important to keep chaste. This model of sexuality fit what the people experienced in their daily lives, just as ours does to us, and they had their studies that revealed women who enjoyed sex far more than was proper."

Enjoyed your post. In particular, I am very interested in knowing what your sources are for this info about the Victorian period. Thanks.

[troels]

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/When-Did-Girls-St...